ering
pines the company halted for the night near a sparkling spring, with scenery all around them so enchanting that Jean exclaimed in her journal, "Oh, this beautiful world! how big it is compared to the pygmy mortals who roam over its surface; and yet how little it is compared to the countless stars that gaze upon us from above this 'boundless contiguity of shade'!"
For several days she had written little. Her thoughts wandered to the Green River experience that had awakened within her being a new life, from which, for her at least, there was to be no ending. She could not write, so she strolled aimlessly away to a mossy rock in a starlit ravine, at the foot of which a rivulet was singing.
"Why can't I see you, mother dear?" she asked. " And you, Bobbie, can't you say a word to your sister Jean?"
For a long time she sat thus, lost in reverie, while the eternal silence around her was broken only by the low cadence of the whispering pines.
Suddenly there came into her inner consciousness a call, unspoken yet heard, "Jean!"
She closed her eyes and saw, as plainly as with physical vision, Ashton Ashleigh's border home; and he was gazing hard at Le-Le, who was kneeling at his feet in beseeching attitude.
"Jean!"
Gradually, as the demon Doubt aroused her senses, a wild, unreasoning jealousy crept into her heart. She turned her face to the eastward and sent out to him an answering call, "Ashleigh!"
• She listened eagerly; but no response was felt or heard, and no mental vision reappeared. With her heart like lead, she returned to the wagon and crept into bed.
When she awoke the sun was shining, and she could not recall the vision that had distressed her. Had her
